A.J. Fitzgerald had a week he’ll remember for the rest of his life. The 25-year-old from Salinas, Calif., caddied for a U.S. standout, teenager Mason Howell, in the Americans’ 17-9 defeat of Great Britain & Ireland in the 50th Walker Cup Match at Cypress Point Club. Thanks to Howell’s impressive play, Fitzgerald had the best view of some of the greatest shots over the competition’s two days, and then he got to celebrate (and have a few frosty beverages) on Sunday night with his brethren from the club’s regular stable of caddies, who carried on the Walker Cup tradition of the home club’s loopers working for both teams in the match.
Monday figured to provide a hangover on many fronts. Fitzgerald had, after all, toted a bag over several practice days and the 51 holes Howell played in competition, and then he was asked to loop for a USGA outing on the morning after the Walker Cup. With that, he had to do something rare for those whose work is traversing one of the world’s most stunning golf layouts. He begged off.
Not that a single Cypress Point member or USGA official could blame him. Fitzgerald needed some down time and the chance to practice because he was going from being a caddie in one USGA event to a competitor in another. By earning medalist honors in his qualifier, Fitzgerald reached the first U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship he was eligible for, and he’ll begin play on Saturday in the 264-man field competing at Troon Country Club and Troon North Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.
It’s been a head-spinning two weeks.
“Definitely,” Fitzgerald said with a chuckle on Friday on the phone after his final practice work. “I feel like I’m as prepared as I can be and am trying not to push it too much. It’s cool. I’ve got my girlfriend out here caddying for me, and she’s pushing the cart around, so it’s easy. She caddied for me in the qualifier, too, so I want to keep that mojo going.”
Oddly enough, the day that Fitzgerald medaled with a 67 in Mid-Am qualifier in San Jose, he said he felt awful because of bad cold and had to call out sick the day before, unable to finish Cypress Point’s three-day father-son event. “Maybe it made me calm down a bit,” he reasoned.
That Fitzgerald is playing in the Mid-Am is a fun side story in itself. He was born on Sept. 13, 2000, and thus turns 25—the youngest age for a Mid-Am contestant—on the first day of the competition in Arizona. If Fitzgerald’s birthday was Sept. 14, he would have needed to wait until next year.
When the date for this year’s tournament was announced, Fitzgerald did a double-take and then double-checked on the USGA’s rules and thought it was “cool” in discovering he was eligible. His younger golf friends agreed.
“I’ve been using a long putter for a while, and I like bucket hats, and these guys have been saying, ‘You’ve been acting like you’re a mid-am since you were like 19,’” Fitzgerald said with a laugh.
Caddie A.J. Fitzgerald and U.S. player Mason Howell line up a putt during the Walker Cup.
Logan Whitton
Of the 32 full-time caddies at Cypress Point, 20 were chosen to work the Walker Cup—10 for each side—and Fitzgerald isn’t quite sure why he was picked or how he ended up on Howell’s bag. They made for an intriguing pair. Howell is a precocious, 18-year-old high school senior who burst onto the national scene in August by becoming the third-youngest winner of the U.S. Amateur. Fitzgerald is a decidedly late bloomer. His play in high school didn’t attract attention from college coaches, and he went to Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, not to play golf but study business. “I kind of thought I wouldn’t play competitive golf anymore,” Fitzgerald.
If not for the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, that might have remained Fitzgerald’s route. “Which maybe would’ve been a path where I would have maybe had a job or had more money,” he said slyly.
Instead, Fitzgerald moved back home and joined the golf team at Cal State Monterey Bay. He played golf nearly every day, was caddying part-time at Cypress Point at that juncture, and fell in love with the game again—helped by work with his coach and a long-handled putter he was introduced to by a friend.
Fitzgerald is now one of the more formidable amateurs in the Bay Area, having won the Northern California Golf Association’s Player of the Year honor in 2023-24. Beyond a bunch of top-10s and winning Monterey and Tracy city ams, Fitzgerald qualified for the past two U.S. Amateurs, though he didn’t make the cut this year at The Olympic Club when Howell won.
If there was a memorable caddie during the Walker Cup, it’s probably Fitzgerald, who is slight of stature and has a mop of curly brown hair that spilled out from the U.S. caps he wore. He’s outgoing by nature and sports an engaging smile. He also was caught on the broadcast on Sunday morning, sandwiched in the middle of a high-10 between Howell and Jacob Modleski’s caddie when Howell celebrated his walk-off eagle at 17 to close out a U.S. point in foursomes.
Beyond that shot, Fitzgerald saw Howell make an albatross on the par-5 second hole during a practice round, and, more importantly, drain two long-range putts at 15 and 16 on Saturday en route to a victory over Luke Poulter in singles. “Those putts were unbelievable,” he said.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Fitzgerald said of first working with Howell. “But he couldn’t have been nicer, and we were very much on the same page. … Obviously, he’s incredibly talented, but what I took away the most is that he’s a very smart golfer. Even the little stuff, like trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing—he looked at the moss on a tree 40 yards away. And I’m, like, I never would have even looked at that.”
Fitzgerald, who first experienced Cypress Point as a high-schooler and now gets to play the course a couple of times a month, admits that his favorite memories from the Walker Cup week will be less about the competition and more about the camaraderie he felt with his fellow Cypress Point caddies.
It was no small thing, he said, that they got to lounge around the members’ locker room every day, joking, laughing and telling stories—an experience not remotely possible beyond the Walker Cup.
“One of the coolest parts of the week,” Fitzgerald said. “Those will be memories for a long time.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
